Many plants, like the tulip and the apple tree, would not blossom in the springtime were it not for the period of dormancy that is the gift of winter’s chill. Their example can inspire us to use this season of slumber to cleanse ourselves like flora shedding lifeless foliage so that we, too, may emerge from under the frost refreshed and renewed when spring arrives. -Anonymous

"Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough."
-   A. E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad, 1896